Igor Polevitzky's Architectural Vision

for a Modern Miami

By
Allan
T.
Shulman
Allan T. Shulman is a practicing
architect who teaches at the
Florida International University
School of Architecture, Miami,
Florida and the University of
Miami School of Architecture,
Coral Gables, Florida. He
currently is working on mono-
graphs on Morris Lapidus and
L. Murray Dixon. He received
his B.Arch. from Cornell
University and his M.Arch.
in Suburb and Town Design
from the University of Miami.
Photographs and drawings
from the Historical Museum
of Southern Florida, except
where noted.
etween 1934 and 1978
Igor
Polevitzky (1911-1978) designed
more than five hundred
buildings
in South Florida and the
Caribbean. He
explored
the
gamut
of Florida
building types,
taking
into account the most
significant
aesthetic and functional
architectural issues of the
emerging tropical city
of Miami. The
breadth of his work is
impressive
in that
Polevitzky rejected repetition
- each
project was a
complex
initiative
responding
to the
particular client, climate,
and site. He did not subscribe to an established architectural doctrine, prefer-
ring
to
develop
a creative and
personal style. Polevitzky
had a thematic interest
in
spatial
elements suitable to the
tropics such as
courtyards, loggias, porches,
terraces, raised
galleries,
and
patios.
He
experimented
with the theme of the
building envelope,
which he
progressively
distorted and reduced from the
white
planar masses of the Bauhaus until the
envelope
itself became little
more than a frame. He
investigated
the
possibilities
of movement and the
corollary implications
of the
progression
of
spaces
in his
designs. Finally,
he
delved into the innovative
programming
and
iconography
critical to the
emerging
resort structure of Miami. The
significance
of
Polevitzky's
work lies
in his consistent intent to make architecture
appropriate
to
living
in Florida
and
responsive
to Florida's
developing
urban and suburban landscapes (fig. 1).
Polevitzky
was an
important transitional
figure
in the
development
of South
Florida's architecture. He realized the intrinsic value of vernacular and tradi-
tional
building
elements such as the
patio, porch,
and
loggia, yet
came to view
these not as fixed elements but as
spatial themes. Combined with the
open
plan
in his
early work, these elements
began
to take on new forms, often
becoming part
of the structure itself.
Polevitzky developed techniques govern-
ing
the
gradation
of
space
from indoor to outdoor, with nuanced levels of
partial protection
in between. This
progression
became thematic, establishing
the
logic
of the entire structure.
By adapting
the climatic necessities of Florida
to the
language
of Modernism, abstracting,
and
finally amplifying
these ele-
ments to define the whole structure, Polevitzky explored
the Florida house in
ways
it had never been seen before and has not been seen since.
Igor Boris
Polevitzky
was born in St.
Petersburg, Russia, in 1911, the son of
Boris
Polevitzky,
an electrical
engineer
who at one time was
mayor
of the
Russian
port city
of Murmansk. Cast out
during
the Russian Revolution in
1918, the
Polevitzky family
took
refuge
in Finland until 1922, when
they moved
to the United States and settled in
Philadelphia. Igor
studied
engineering
at
the
University
of
Pennsylvania
in 1929 but later switched to the
prestigious
de-
partment
of architecture. The excellent
reputation
the
university enjoyed
at
the time was
partially
due to the
presence
of Paul
Philippe
Cret
(1876 -1945),
the architect and critic most associated with Modern Classicism, whose works
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